


something else, something fundamentally you

by louciferish



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Ballet, Fluff, Kissing, Light Angst, M/M, Misunderstandings, Public Confessions, Scents & Smells, Secret Skater 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:07:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21944089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/louciferish/pseuds/louciferish
Summary: They call it amoressence, the scent of love, and it’s no ordinary smell. It’s something beyond a favorite candle or a beloved food, a mixture of aromas utterly unique to each person. It’s something no one could ever truly name: the smell they can only identify the day they meet their soulmate, and it’s believed to echo a faded, happy memory of the past.When Yuuri collides with Victor Nikiforov in the hall outside his class one day, the floor drops out from beneath him when Victor declaresYuurito be his soulmate. He should be happy, right? After all, he’s admired Victor from afar for years.Yet all Yuuri can think is,Oh no. Not this again.
Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov, Mila Babicheva/Sara Crispino, Otabek Altin/Yuri Plisetsky
Comments: 62
Kudos: 650





	something else, something fundamentally you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Happy holidays!
> 
> This year I drew LadyAshyTakaSahn as my giftee. When I saw prompts that included both Soulmate AU and Coffee Shop AUs my brain uhhhh went crazy. I hope in a good way XD

Yuuri rushes out of the dance studio with his backpack cradled in his arms. The zipper pockets are open, papers and electronics tilting toward escape as he struggles to get out of the building. His only focus is on keeping everything together long enough to reach the bus stop.

It’s nearly eight PM, and Yuuri’s just given his final graded performance of his next-to-last term as a Masters student, but maybe it would be more accurate to say he’s just _ruined_ his final performance. A hundred things in the past couple weeks popped up, preventing him from getting as much practice as he’d intended. It started with the death of his family dog earlier in the month, and it spiraled out from there, like a single point of pain that reverberates through the whole body. He knows— _knows_ —that his extensions were sloppy and incomplete. His choreography was rushed. If his grade falls because of his poor performance today, he could lose his stipend, or even be placed on probation. 

Yuuri stops long enough to put his backpack down and fish out his jacket, wrestling to get it on. His dance clothes are so thin, the winter air outside will slice right through them, but he doesn’t want to dally in the arts building long enough to change—that only increases his chances of running into someone he knows, someone who might ask him, _How did it go?_ and Yuuri can’t handle talking about it right now.

Once he has his jacket zipped to the throat, he stoops to grab his bag. There’s a weird smell in the building today, like—laundry? Or, more like someone left a window open. It’s a fresh aroma, strangely familiar. He can’t quite put his finger on where he knows it from, but it’s strong enough to be distracting and he frowns, trying to puzzle out where he knows it from. 

Through the glass double doors of the arts building, Yuuri can see a bright pink campus bus moving toward the stop outside, and he curses softly. If he doesn’t catch that one, he’ll have to wait fifteen minutes for another, and the last thing he needs right now is to be alone in the cold with his thoughts. 

Clutching his bag tight to his chest, Yuuri dashes for the door.

Instead, he collides with something warm.

“Sorry,” he gasps, as the other person catches him, their hands gripping his upper arms. “I didn’t see—”

“ _It’s you_.” The words are almost whispered, and Yuuri can only think of one word to describe them: reverent. He looks up from his backpack, shocked by the tone, and finds himself staring up at the familiar silver locks and shining blue eyes of Victor Nikiforov.

Victor Nikiforov: prodigy, internationally decorated ballet danseur, and the youngest adjunct professor employed by The Nijinsky School, and now he’s looking at Yuuri like he holds the keys to the universe in his palm.

“You’re my soulmate.”

It’s such a simple statement, but Yuuri feels like the floor has dropped from beneath his feet. 

Looking at flyers and articles online, he’d always thought Victor’s eyes were the same shade of blue as a cloudless sky or a crystalline mountain lake, but up close he realizes they’re teal, a bright and bubbly shade that deepens to midnight just before it touches his irises. Yuuri never realized that the expression “to fall into someone’s eyes” could be so literal.

 _This can’t be happening_ , he thinks.

Victor’s grip on Yuuri’s arms tightens briefly, and he bends closer. For a second, Yuuri has the hysterical thought that he’s about to be kissed, but then Victor pauses a few centimeters short, his nose just brushing Yuuri’s hair. He inhales.

“You smell perfect,” he murmurs, “like cinnamon, nutmeg—” He inhales again, pulling Yuuri closer as he adds, “and coffee.”

Yuuri’s heart, which was fluttering in the cage of his ribs like a wild dove from from the moment Victor touched him, drops.

Oh. This really _isn’t_ happening.

Yuuri can’t sure what scent he’ll carry for his soulmate—no one really knows, until they meet the person they’re destined for—but by this point in his life, he’s positive it’s got nothing to do with coffee.

It’s something many of Yuuri’s friends find hilarious, how often he’s been pursued on campus. Phichit had kept a tally one semester of how many students approached Yuuri, insisting he must be their soulmate because they noticed he smells of coffee and baked goods. The number that particular term had been eighteen—six of them during finals week alone—and that was just the cases Phichit had witnessed or heard about. Yuuri finds it all… embarrassing isn’t the word. _Humiliating_ would be more accurate.

Yuuri knows he smells like coffee and cinnamon, and he knows exactly why. For the past four years, he’s been living on his own, in a second-floor apartment off campus. In addition to the perk of having a whole floor of the building to himself and no neighbors, Yuuri’s little downtown apartment has another benefit: the first floor is occupied by the _Eros Cafe_.

He hadn’t foreseen the chaos it would cause, having the smells of a coffee shop permeating everything in his closet, but it’s become part of his life. Through the years, Yuuri’s gotten to be downright professional at turning people down and explaining the mistake. _It’s not you; it’s me, or rather, it’s the fact that everything I own smells like roasting beans_. 

Yuuri parts his lips, one of his many rehearsed lines on the tip of his tongue, armed and ready.

And then, he stops.

Victor is still staring at him, refusing to let go. There’s an urgency in his bright blue eyes that calls to Yuuri, tugging at something embedded deep in his chest; some might call it a pull on the ‘red string of fate’, but Yuuri suspects it’s got far more to do with selfish desire. He’s admired Victor as a dancer for years, looked up to him from afar, clipped pictures of him and reviews of his shows out of the school paper, and now that very same man from Yuuri’s undergrad vision board is clinging onto Yuuri’s arms with an intent that verges on desperation. 

“Yuuri, right?” And Yuuri would probably topple over if Victor weren’t holding him up. It would never have occurred to him that Victor might know his name already. Victor smiles, as if he can read the tone of Yuuri’s thoughts and enjoys every minute of what he’s hearing. “ _Yuuuuuri_ , give me your number.”

“What? Like my… student ID number?” Why is that the only thing he can think of right now?

Victor laughs, shaking his head, but it’s soft, not mocking. “No, your phone number. Please? I have a class to teach in five minutes, but I want to talk more.” Victor slides his grip down Yuuri’s arms to take Yuuri’s hands in his own, lifting them up, asking permission with his whole body. “Will you let me get to know you?”

And, even though Yuuri knows it isn’t real, he says yes.

-

**[10:33 AM] Vitya ^.~**   
_Hiiiii Yuuri  
It’s Victor! good morning_

**[10:35 AM] Yuuri**   
_Good morning  
Did your class end already?_

**[10:39 AM] Vitya ^.~**   
_Not until 11  
But I wanted to talk  
So I gave them a pop quiz to keep them busy_

**[10:45] Yuuri**   
_Those poor kids_

**[10:55] Vitya ^.~**   
_Don’t worry they deserved it  
They were teasing me about looking at my phone too much  
I can’t help being excited  
Class is out now_

**[11:10] Yuuri**   
_Why are you excited?_

**[11:11] Vitya ^.~**   
_I can’t believe my soulmate was you all along!  
How long have we been in the same building and never noticed???  
We must have almost met 100 times_

**[11:34] Vitya ^.~**   
_Yuuri?_

**[11:45] Yuuri**   
_Sorry I’m studying  
Finals you know_

**[11:48] Vitya ^.~**   
_Oh  
I won’t bother you then  
Let me know when you’re free to talk!_

-

Yuuri sets his phone face down on the coffee shop table and drops his head into his hands with a deep groan. Why hadn’t he just told Victor the truth? Every ping from his cell makes Yuuri’s stomach clench now, and the fact that Victor is so happy, so _cute_ , is only making him feel worse. He can’t tell Victor what happened now. He’ll have to keep up the charade until the day he dies.

_But what if Victor meets his real soulmate before then?_

Yuuri groans again.

“Hey!” Yuri’s voice snaps out from behind the glass pastry case. “Shut up with your weird… sex noises or whatever. You’re scaring the good customers away.”

“Sorry,” Yuuri mutters, although a glance around the room tells him no one else has noticed. Most of the customers in _Eros_ are students wearing headphones—either listening to their own music or using white noise to cancel out the indie rock coffee shop soundtrack piping through the overhead speakers. 

Yuri’s soulmate, Otabek, designed the playlist for the cafe, which means it’s a lot more obscure in its choices and goes a little bit harder on the rock end of “indie rock” compared to what would be allowed in a Starbucks. That’s part of why Eros has the level of success it does—the alternative and hipster crowds flock into the shop in droves, even if only to _say_ they drink local instead of corporate.

Although he’s not technically employed here either, Otabek is currently set up at the table next to Yuuri’s, his face half-obscured by a set of huge headphones, eyes narrowed to slits as he peers at whatever tiny code is scrolling along his laptop screen. He glances over at Yuuri, as if he can hear the clamoring of Yuuri’s anxieties inside his skull even through his own music, and lowers his headphones.

For a few seconds, guitar noises wail out of both sets of speakers, and then with a click, it stops. “What’s up with you?” Otabek asks.

Yuuri chews his lip, debating whether to say anything. He and Otabek are more acquaintances than they are friends, so it might not be the most appropriate way to go, but Yuuri doesn’t know many people his own age who already have soulmates, and Otabek is uniquely positioned to answer Yuuri’s question.

He’s watching Yuuri think, but his hands are poised over his headphones, ready to dive back into his own world any moment. Yuuri decides to go for it.

“How did you know Yuri was your soulmate?” he blurts out. “Since he works in a coffee shop, doesn’t he just smell like—?” He ends the sentence with a gesture around the cafe, encompassing the chalk board of drinks, the stacks of whole beans poised over the grinders, and the bakery case against the back wall. 

“Oh.” Otabek glances over at the counter. There’s no line at the moment, and Yuri has his back to the cafe seating. His blond hair is bundled into a half-ponytail to hold it back from his face as he leans on the counter by the prep sink with a pencil in hand. At his waist, his apron strings are tied in a gordian knot. 

Despite all Yuri’s protests and sharp words, Yuuri sees him like this a lot—focused on a stack of textbooks during every minute of downtime he gets. For the past few months, since he and Otabek became a Thing, Yuri’s been studying for exams, trying to skip his last three semesters of high school so he can start college early with his boyfriend instead of staying back. Otabek, meanwhile, deferred his entrance to the university as a freshman, waiting for Yuri to catch up. Though neither of them is publicly affectionate—not like some soulmate pairs who hang on each other constantly—Yuuri has no doubt that the two of them are a matched set, both equally devoted to the other.

“I’ve known Yuri since we were kids,” Otabek admits. “We went to the same summer camp. I knew right away. I’ve known for years.” He’s not the sort to blush, but he drops his eyes to the table in front of him, pulling his shoulders up toward his ears. “But we were kids, and what ten year-old wants a soulmate, right? So I didn’t talk to him until… you know.”

Yuuri does know. He was here the day Yuri figured things out on his own end. Otabek had come in as a customer and walked up to the counter, nodding along to music pouring into his ears through ever-present headphones. He must have been distracted by that. He must not have realized Yuri just got a part-time job here. Otabek’s hand touched the counter, and Yuri dropped a full pot of coffee onto the concrete between them. It shattered. 

But if Otabek had already known the truth long before Yuri started working at Eros, then his advice is no use to Yuuri after all. Yuuri groans, burying his face in both hands again. 

“You could ask Mila,” Otabek suggests. “I think her amoressence is coffee-related. She mentioned it to me once.”

Yuuri perks up a little at that, though he tries not to show too much interest. It’s considered very uncouth to _ask_ someone about their amoressence, or even just what their favorite smell is in general. It’s natural to be curious, and people do volunteer the information sometimes, but asking for it is a huge faux pas. 

Luckily for him, Mila is nearby, wiping down empty tables, and she looks over at the sound of her name, smiling. “What’s this about my Sara?”

 _Right, Sara_. Yuuri flushes, feeling even the tips of his ears heat. Sara’s a lovely girl, but she’d been extremely… friendly toward Yuuri the first time he met her. He was relieved to learn she had a soulmate already, which gave her outgoing personality a bit more leeway, but she was still more enthusiastic—and more tactile—than Yuuri was used to.

“Otabek said your amoressence is coffee,” Yuuri says, “but you work in a coffee shop?”

“Of course.” Mila tosses her red waves back from her face, hand on her cocked hip bunching the side of her black canvas apron. “I love the smell of coffee. Why wouldn’t I want to be around it all the time? Before this, I worked at a movie theater.” She wrinkles her nose. “Every night, I’d come home and my clothes smelled like buttered popcorn. That smell started to churn my stomach pretty damn quickly. After that I thought, next time I get a job, I want to work somewhere that smells _good_.” She holds her hands out, gesturing to the bakery and the espresso machines stacked on the counter. “Here I am.”

It’s understandable when she puts that spin on it, but doesn’t answer Yuuri’s real question at all, so he tries again. “How did you know when you’d found your person, if everything around you smells like coffee anyway?”

Mila’s lips twitch into a small smile. It’s nothing like her usual cocky grins or the stretched, almost pained happiness she feeds to customers, and it makes Yuuri want to look away. He’s caught a small glimpse of something not intended for him.

“Sara doesn’t smell like any old coffee to me,” she says softly, her voice burbling with warmth. “My grandmother grew up poor, and she was set in her ways. She always drank this cheap instant coffee, thick and sludgy with lots of sugar and no milk. When I stayed with her, she’d pour me a little of my own, and I always drank it even though it tasted too bitter and sickeningly sweet all at once, because it was part of being close to her.

“It’s the kind of scent no coffee shop can ever replicate,” Mila concludes, shrugging. “That cheap, sugary coffee, all overlayed with a hint of lemon from the cleaning product she used to wipe the counters every morning. That’s what smells like happiness to me.”

Yuuri looks over and finds Otabek, too, smiling. He’s not looking at Mila, but staring off across the room. Yuri still has his back to them, but even he looks more relaxed now, leaning on the counter and humming to himself as he scratches out answers to his studies.

“How did you know?” Yuuri asks. “How do you know what your scent is going to be?”

Mila shrugs, and Yuuri isn’t surprised. Not even his parents had ever managed to truly explain the _how_ to him. “When you find it—the real deal—it smacks you right in the face. It basically screams _this is right_ , you know?”

Although Yuuri nods, his heart is sinking. _I don’t know,_ he thinks. _How am I ever meant to be so certain?_

A middle-aged woman with her gray-streaked blonde hair cut in a sharply angled bob totters into the shop on too-tall heels, and Mila and Otabek exchange a Look. Behind the counter, Yuri still has his back turned to the door. They can all sense a customer service shitstorm brewing on the horizon. 

“One second,” Mila says under her breath, and Yuuri nods at her to go. It won’t improve anyone’s day if Yuri starts fighting with the customers again. 

Otabek returns focus to his laptop, and Yuuri looks down at his phone. There’s a new message.

**[12:52] Vitya ^.~**   
_Hey, let’s make a date!  
Graduate finals are over in four days, right?  
Let’s meet up then.   
Do you want to come over to my place, or should I come to yours?_

Yuuri chews his lip, considering. He absolutely can’t have Victor in his apartment, because to get there they’d have to walk through Eros, and that would give away everything Yuuri is trying to hide. The moment Victor steps inside, he’ll know exactly where the smell of coffee on Yuuri’s clothes comes from. 

At the same time, Yuuri can’t bear to go to Victor’s apartment, to invade Victor’s space with his presence only to end the charade between them. No, it’s better if they find neutral ground.

**[12:59] Yuuri**   
_How about we meet on the public beach?_

**[13:02] Vitya ^.~**   
_Have you forgotten it’s winter??? :o  
What have finals done to you?_

**[13:05] Yuuri**   
_No one else will be there this time of year  
Besides, I like the beach_

**[13:13] Vitya ^.~**   
_I like the beach too!  
Okay, it’s a date then! :D_

_Great_ , Yuuri thinks, dropping his phone on the table. _Now I can run a countdown clock to the day I ruin everything._

Across the room, a paper travel cup smashes into the wall, brown liquid exploding and running in rivulets down the already-stained surface. The woman from earlier flees out the door, her heels sounding out _clack-clack-clack_ on the tile. Otabek sighs and shakes his head, but beneath it his mouth curves ever so slightly upward.

-

Four days goes by all too quickly. At first, Yuuri is genuinely consumed with studying for his non-performance exams, memorizing dates and names from the history of ballet and composing a sample choreography for his dance education course, but he finishes the last of his tests on day three, and then the final day for him is simply… waiting.

That’s the worst part. The fourth day seems to be as long as the three before it combined, due in part to how little sleep Yuuri gets. Fortunately, he lives above a coffee shop. When the morning dawns, Yuuri stumbles downstairs and attempts to replace all the sleep he didn’t have with hot liquids. Then, he puts on his boots and walks to the beach.

The streets are a dead zone. Now that graduate finals have ended, many students have already left town to visit family, and the undergrads are holed up in dorms and libraries, studying for their own tests. This end of term mass exodus cuts the town’s population in half. Yuuri walks with both hands wrapped around his paper cup to warm his fingers and watches his own breath emerge from his lips in wispy puffs of white. 

As he expected, the beach is practically deserted. Sand stretches out before him in every direction, and beyond that a sea of stormy cadet blue, cast dark beneath burgeoning light grey clouds. An elderly couple walks hand in hand on the shore, stopping occasionally to pick up a shell from the tide line and toss it into a plastic bag. Yuuri recognizes one of the women as a vendor who sells shell jewelry on campus in the early fall. He’d always wondered how she managed to get so many intact pieces when there were hoards of students and children hunting for them all summer. Now he knows.

Closing his eyes, Yuuri sucks in a deep breath of sea air. The smell, the briney feel of it on the back of his throat, reminds him very much of the village where he grew up, although it’s not exactly the same. It’s _almost_ the smell of home, but this is a different beach, a different ocean, and it’s not quite what he remembers. There’s something missing, just out of his grasp. He takes another deep breath and rolls it over his tongue, searching—there. Is that the aroma he was looking for?

“Yuuri, good morning!” Victor’s bold, cheerful voice snaps Yuuri’s concentration, and he almost drops his coffee in his haste to turn around.

Victor is clambering over a dune despite the presence of a perfectly good pathway a few strides to his right, and when he descends toward Yuuri it’s with shuffling feet kicking sand and flapping, wild arms. He gains too much momentum and nearly runs right into Yuuri, who stops him with one hand, juggling his coffee in the other.

“Aren’t you supposed to be graceful?” Yuuri asks, then winces at his own words. Being rude and thoughtless isn’t a great start to this meeting.

But instead of faltering, Victor’s smile brightens. “Sometimes!” he says. “Unfortunately sand is a very different surface than a studio floor or a stage. Sand can _betray you_.”

Yuuri blinks at Victor, confused and a little astonished. This isn’t the foot he’d expected them to start off on, and now he’s stumbling to catch up to the tempo. It doesn’t help that Victor is, as always, unfairly gorgeous, and now standing much closer to Yuuri than he’s used to. Victor’s silver hair, buffeted by the sea breeze, is falling over one eye, where the other is blue as the Caribbean. Yuuri’s only ever seen him in dance costumes, practice gear, or a suit for teaching, but today Victor is wearing a soft, oversized pale pink sweater and a pair of grey jeans that _must_ be tailored. It seems impossible anything could fit Victor’s body so well right off the rack.

Victor is beautiful, and he’s brilliant. He looks ecstatic to be here, and Yuuri is absolutely leading him on. He’s a terrible person. 

Before Yuuri came out this morning, he’d done laundry and taken a very thorough shower. He should now smell more like tea tree oil and “tropical burst” detergent than coffee, if the claims on his cleaning products are to be believed. With Victor now standing so close, Yuuri holds himself stiff, waiting for the other man to notice that Yuuri’s old scent is gone.

Instead, Victor tilts his head and eyes Yuuri from top to toe. “Ah, my soulmate is so beautiful,” he sighs. “I must be very lucky.”

“Oh. Ah— Thank you? You’re… also very attractive.” Yuuri’s never been very comfortable with compliments, especially not about his appearance. And how could _Victor Nikiforov_ find Yuuri beautiful? Yuuri knows the man must be familiar with mirrors: he does ballet, after all.

Victor starts to say something else and Yuuri, worried they’ll get stuck in a compliment whirlpool, interrupts him by gesturing down the shoreline. “Would you like to walk?”

“Great idea! We can get exercise and talk at the same time. I’ve been looking forward to getting to know you better.”

“There’s not much to know,” Yuuri mutters, but the wind whips it away before his self-deprecation can reach Victor. 

Something brushes Yuuri’s elbow, and he jumps, but when he looks over he only finds Victor jamming both hands into the pockets of his coat. “For instance,” Victor begins, “where are you from?” 

“Japan,” Yuuri answers.

“Like Tokyo?” Victor’s smile is wide at the thought, but barely falters when Yuuri shakes his head. 

“It’s a small town. You won’t have heard of it.”

“Oh. I’m from Saint Petersburg!” Victor exclaims. “You will have heard of it, I guess. I was born there, but then when I finished my early schooling, I really wanted to travel and see new places, so I applied to a lot of different schools! This was my first choice, though. The sea reminds me of home.”

“Me too.” Yuuri knows all of this already, which is embarrassing. He’s followed Victor’s career for years, knows all the roles he’s ever performed, read every interview from the school paper to translated Russian press articles. He doesn’t need Victor to tell him these stories, but if he points that out it will be—well—creepy. 

He used to have a photo of Victor pinned on his bedroom wall back home.

“Do you have any siblings?” Victor prompts him, nudging Yuuri’s shoulder lightly with his own.

“One. A sister.”

“That must be fun! I’m an only child, but I always wanted a sibling to play with. I want a big family someday. Do you?” Yuuri shrugs. He hasn’t thought about it much. “What do your parents do?”

“They own an onsen—a hot springs resort.”

“Wow! My mama was a dancer, too, and my papa—” Again, Yuuri knows this, and he’s starting to feel uneasy about it. It’s hard to focus on what Victor is saying as they walk, his body so close to Yuuri’s that Yuuri can feel the warmth radiating through his coat. When Yuuri spots a bench between the dunes up ahead, he gestures to it. At least if they sit it will eliminate one distraction.

The surface of the bench is ice cold beneath Yuuri’s thighs, and he shivers. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea, after all. Then, Victor scoots closer, and oh—this is worse than the walking. Now Victor is pressed into his side from hip to knee, basically radiating heat, and Yuuri feels like his body is a ball of rubber bands, all the outside edges pulled tight and ready to snap.

“I’m probably doing this wrong,” Victor says, his voice suddenly so solemn it shakes Yuuri from his thoughts and forces him to turn. Victor is staring out toward the water, the wind touseling his silvery hair. His eyes are reaching for the horizon, wistful and serious. “I’ve never actually been on a date before, you know; I wanted to wait to find my soulmate.

“I’ve enjoyed texting you the last few days,” he says, turning to Yuuri with the slightest upturn to his lips, “but I can tell you’re not having fun right now. If there’s something I can do differently, please tell me. I know I can be a little much sometimes.”

“No!” Yuuri’s startled by his own vehemence, but Victor only raises his eyebrows slightly, curious as Yuuri rushes to explain before he’s tongue-tied by his own embarrassment. “You’re perfect, really. You shouldn’t change anything. I’m just… worried.” He shuffles his feet through the sand, kicking up a weedy little plant that’s refused to give up in the winter chill. “I don’t really know what I’m doing either, you know? I—um—I waited too.”

Victor lights up at that, less a slow dawning and more the instant “poof” of a lightbulb when the switch is flipped. He smiles, soft and sweet, and reaches for Yuuri’s hand. This time, Yuuri manages not to flinch away. Victor’s hands are warm, and his skin is soft, just as lovely as Yuuri had imagined. “We can be worried together, then,” he says, “and we can learn what to do together, too.”

Yuuri should stop this. He should tell Victor the truth, before it all spirals out of control. But—this is everything he’s ever wanted; and how can he possibly ask Victor to stop when he’s looking at Yuuri like that, like he _matters_?

As Yuuri’s thoughts begin to spiral, Victor leans in closer, his face now so near to Yuuri’s skin that Yuuri can feel the warmth of his breath rustling his sideburns. Yuuri’s own breathing stops, caught in his throat, and he freezes. Victor leans in even closer, his eyes half-closed, silver lashes fanning over deep blue irises. This isn’t how Yuuri pictured his first kiss would go. It’s better.

But Victor doesn’t complete his arc. Yuuri’s only teased with the nearness of those glossy, pale pink lips as Victor’s eyes fall closed and he _inhales_. “I see now why people compose art about this experience,” Victor murmurs. “I can’t imagine I’ll ever get tired of your scent.”

Yuuri’s heart plummets to his gut with an impact that leaves him sick and shaking. He’s going to have to stop this charade. He _will_ ; but Victor leans back and smiles at him again, and he cups both his warm hands around Yuuri’s, and Yuuri can’t bear to say the words now. Once again, his nerve slips away from him, and he goes weak.

-

Yuuri goes from sleep to wakefulness all at once. Before his mind can catch up with his body, he calls out, “Victor?”

Nothing answers him but darkness. A faint grey light illuminates the window in his bedroom, beyond the thin curtain, but there’s no one around to hear Yuuri’s cry. 

Of course there’s no one there. Yuuri frowns and rubs his eyes, then fumbles for his glasses on the side table. His heart is pounding, and when his vision clears, he can see the 2:27 illuminated on his alarm clock in accusing red light. It’s the middle of the night, too early even for the coffee shop to be percolating—so why is he wide awake? And why was he so certain Victor would be here?

His dreams are a fog in which he can find nothing familiar, and it’s been days since the two of them talked on the beach. He’s barely spoken to Victor this week, back to hiding from his problems, and the only reason that hasn’t been a problem is that they’re now knee deep in undergrad finals week, so Victor is too busy to try meeting up again. 

So, if Victor hasn’t been on his mind any more than usual, why had some thought of him woken Yuuri from a deep sleep?

Interrogating the darkness, Yuuri shivers in his bed. It’s freezing, which is how he likes it when he sleeps, but the temperature has dropped even lower than he intended. A knife of icy wind slices through the room, and Yuuri wraps the comforter tighter around himself, bundling up like a burrito as he rises from the bed. 

He pads across the room, the hardwoods cold as steel beneath his bare feet, until he reaches the window. It’s open just a crack to keep the room cool, and he fumbles a hand out of his blanket to push it shut. Beyond the gauzy white curtain, he can see something fluttering in the street lights, like a moth drawn in to their brilliance. 

His eyes sore and heavy with sleep, he stumbles back over to the bed and curls up. In seconds, he’s asleep again.

Unlike before, when Yuuri’s dreams were amorphous and strange, this time he falls right into a dream so familiar that he knows every flavor and shape of its form. He can suddenly feel he’s had this dream a dozen times, or a hundred, though he can’t remember any specific instance in the past. 

He’s back home, on the beach he’d played on as a child. There was a freak late storm, and snow has fallen to cover the sand and kiss the blooming sakura on the hillside. Yuuri’s small, boot-covered feet sink into pure white flakes and come back up with a shower of golden grains. Stooping, he shapes a grainy, dry sort of snowball between his mittened hands and lobs it up the beach at Yuuko and Nishigori, both of whom fire back. None of their missiles hit their targets; unstable, they crumble in the air. Mari, nearly twelve and therefore far too old for this childish business, stands nearby with her arms folded, watching them play.

“Be careful!” someone shouts, and Yuuri turns toward the voice to find another boy running behind him: a boy with long, silver hair and huge blue eyes. Yuuri blinks, and the boy is a man.

 _Victor._ Yuuri can hear the waves crashing on the beach beyond them and the scream of black-tailed gulls wheeling overhead. The air smells like salt and metal and something crisp, something unique—snow layered on the sweet smells of spring.

This time, when Yuuri’s eyes fly open, his whole body reacts. He sits up in bed, electrified by certainty. _That smell_. He knows the scent now, knows without any doubt what he was searching for, what note his internal tuning fork had been trying to find on the beach with Victor that day. 

He jumps out of bed and barely feels the searing cold floors on his feet as he runs across the room. Shoving his curtains away, he flings the window open, and the cold air rushes over his skin. 

As he expected, the view from his bedroom window is white: the streets, the rooftops, the grass in the park. Everything in the town is coated in a thin layer of fresh white snow. On the sidewalks below, students rush about wearing leggings and tights under their shorts or toddling on the ice in too-high heels, unprepared for a sudden attack of real winter in a beach town. 

It’s after 8:30, and morning exams will have already started. Yuuri is done for the semester, merely waiting for his final grades, and he could sleep in theoretically, but he can’t possibly sleep right now. He can’t even sit still. He’s been asleep for far too long already. 

There’s a little voice in his head picking at him, telling him he needs to look good—not just good, perfect—but Yuuri tosses it out the window. He doesn’t have time to second-guess every choice he makes this morning. He doesn’t even have time to first-guess it. He throws on his most comfortable jeans, a t-shirt, and a pullover hoodie with the school logo on the front, then excavates his heaviest boots from the back of his closet. They’re dusty and stiff, rarely worn, but he crams a pair of socks into them and jogs out the door, down the stairs.

 _Eros_ is so warm it’s almost stifling, the smell of brewing coffee and roast beans so thick in the air that Yuuri can see it. He doesn’t even pause to say good morning to the staff or the regulars, dropping into a chair by the door to shove his boots on before reaching for the knob.

“Yuuri!” Mila calls out over the jingling of the door bell and the sound of an indie singer crooning on the speakers, _I’m curving like the ocean toward you_. “Don’t you want your morning cup?”

Right. Caffeine would help. He dashes over to the counter long enough to snag his usual from Mila’s hand with a quick “thanks,” and then he’s out the door, into the crisp wind and the snow.

Yuuri’s never actually been to one of Victor’s lectures before, but he knows where the room is. He may have lingered outside once or twice in the past, peering in the slitted window on the door and trying to work up the nerve to stay and introduce himself after class. He never imagined his cowardice might come in handy this way.

Victor is at the front of the room, seated at a long table lined with piles of paper and spare pencils, head down over his phone when Yuuri bursts in. At the sound of the door opening, twenty-something undergrad heads pop up, like robots in a Whack-A-Mole machine. Feeling forty desperate eyes on him, Yuuri charges into the room anyway.

“ _Snow_ ,” he says, because it’s the first word that pops into his head, and a few of the students snicker. Yuuri can feel his face heat at the laughter, but he clenches his fists and tries to stand his ground.

Victor looks up from his phone, eyebrows climbing. He smiles placidly, darting a glance at the now utterly distracted students in the room. “Yuuri, can this wait?” he asks. “I have to finish with this exam, but then I’ve got a break in my schedule, and I’d love to go see the snow with you.”

More laughter prompts Victor to throw a glare at the room, and several of the better students drop their heads back to their test papers, but not all. They’re watching Yuuri, elbowing their seatmates and whispering, and Yuuri considers taking the cue, slinking away back into the hall to wait for Victor to finish.

But no—he can smell it again, a slight twist of that chilly/salty/crisp scent wafting through the room, and he follows it, advancing toward the center of the room. “That’s not what I mean. Victor, that’s your scent, for me. It’s snow.” Victor’s mouth drops open. The room is totally silent. None of the students are even pretending to work on their exams. 

“Not just any snow,” Yuuri continues, pressing forward. “It’s the first snow of winter, the fresh snow in the air on a cold, cloudy day. It’s snow on the seaside, crisping the ocean breeze and turning a summer scent into something entirely new. That’s your amoressence. That’s… that’s what you are to me.”

The look on Victor’s face is strange—so calm it’s almost icy, and Yuuri’s stomach ties itself in knots. Is his answer… wrong somehow? But no, it can’t be. This isn’t a test. He _knows_ what this is. 

Some of the students are whispering again, and still Victor doesn’t look happy. Maybe Yuuri has made a mistake after all. Then, Victor stands, pushing his chair back with a screech. He tosses his phone onto the table and clears the space between them in a few big strides.

His palms are soft and warm as he cups Yuuri’s face between both his hands, and Yuuri’s so overwhelmed by that feeling—Victor’s thumb caressing the rise of his cheek—that it takes him a heartbeat to notice he’s being kissed.

As always, once Yuuri knows what’s happening, he catches on quickly. Clutching Victor’s back and waist, he tugs him in closer, craning up to meet him in the middle. So intertwined, Victor’s scent is everywhere, wrapping around Yuuri like a blanket. It clears his head of the clutter and makes him want nothing more than to be closer, though they’re already pressed together from toe to tip. He’s drunk on it, head spinning, and then he _has_ to hold Victor tighter to keep himself upright. Judging from the fingertips pressing bruises into his scalp, Victor feels much the same. 

A hoot breaks through their focus on one another, the students unable to restrain themselves any longer. One of them yells something, her French accent so thick Yuuri can’t make out the words, but he’s sure from the tone it’s vulgar, and Victor pulls back out of the kiss. His hands fall to rest on Yuuri’s waist instead, but the grip of them makes it clear he has no intent to let go.

“As happy as I am right now,” Victor begins, voice firm in spite of the huge smile dominating his face, “you’re not going to be given A’s simply because I’ve found my soulmate, so you’d best start worrying more about question twenty-five than you do my love life.” 

A few of the students go pale, wide-eyed, while others are more relaxed, but all of them shuffle their papers and at least settle down, even if their attention is still somewhat divided. 

With the horde calmed, Victor turns back to Yuuri, tilting his head down to touch their foreheads together. “I have about a thousand more questions for you now,” he whispers, “and I can’t _wait_ to talk about this, but these kids are never going to focus on their grades if you stay in here with me.”

“I can behave myself,” Yuuri protests, reluctant to let go. Now that he has Victor’s scent wrapped all around him and Victor’s hands—creeping toward the back pockets of his jeans, actually. 

Yuuri raises his eyebrows and Victor doesn’t pretend to be ashamed for a second. “I can’t,” he admits. “Can you wait for me outside? We can go somewhere on my break, if you know somewhere we could talk. Maybe we could grab a coffee?”

Smiling, Yuuri pulls one of Victor’s hands from his waist and raises it to his lips, dropping kisses on each knuckle until Victor shivers and flushes. “In fact, I know the perfect place.”


End file.
